Three Indian Americans win 2025 Hertz fellowships for innovation

Suraj Chandran, Arav Karighattam, and Ananthan Sadagopan get scholarships empowering the most promising innovators in science and technology

By Arun Kumar

Three Indian American scholars — Suraj Chandran, Arav Karighattam, and Ananthan Sadagopan — are among 19 recipients of the 2025 Hertz Fellowships for empowering the most promising innovators in science and technology.

Hertz Fellows receive five years of funding, offering flexibility from the traditional constraints of graduate training and the independence needed to pursue research that best advances U.S. security and leads to life-changing innovations.

READ: Vedika Chamaria gets State Department scholarship to study Korean (June 4th, 2025) 

The 2025 Hertz Fellows are pursuing solutions to some of our most vexing challenges, including developing proprioceptive robotic hands, building collision avoidance systems for satellites, and developing grid-scale renewable energy storage systems, according to a Hertz Foundation news release.

Suraj Chandran pursuing his doctorate in chemical physics at Columbia University, develops theoretical and computational methods to probe novel quantum regimes of chemical dynamics and to accelerate the development of efficient, sustainable energy conversion systems.

Chandran received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. During his undergraduate career, he worked with Dr. Joseph Subotnik to investigate how the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect may be mediated by the interplay between molecular vibrations and spin-orbit coupling.

Arav Karighattam from Massachusetts Institute of Technology is  a mathematician passionate about algebraic number theory and arithmetic geometry, and seeks to understand the mysteries underlying the structure of solutions to Diophantine equations.

Karighattam received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in mathematics with highest honors from Harvard University in March 2024 and was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding research in his undergraduate senior thesis. He will begin his doctoral studies in mathematics at the MIT.

Ananthan Sadagopan, pursuing a doctorate in biological and biomedical science at Harvard University, is focusing on chemical biology and the development of new therapeutic strategies.

During his doctoral studies, he hopes to harness chemical biology to pioneer next-generation treatments for currently intractable diseases. Sadagopan earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology from the MIT.

Like all Hertz Fellows since 1963, the newest recipients make a moral obligation to support the United States in times of national emergency, according to the release.

“Hertz Fellows embody the promise of future scientific breakthroughs, major engineering achievements and thought leadership that is vital to our future,” said Stephen Fantone, chair of the Hertz Foundation board of directors and president and CEO of Optikos Corporation.

“The newest recipients will direct research teams, serve in leadership positions in our government and take the helm of major corporations and startups that impact our communities and the world.”

The new fellows will conduct their doctoral research at 12 of the nation’s top research institutions, including fellows at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Rockefeller University for the first time.

In addition to financial support, the 19 new fellows join an influential network of more than 1,300 Hertz Fellows worldwide who are responsible for some of the most significant scientific and technological progress of the past century.

“For over 60 years, the Hertz Foundation has invested in the exceptional promise of Hertz Fellows, empowering them to explore, to challenge and to lead,” said Wendy Connors, president of the Hertz Foundation. “We are proud of the 2025 class of Hertz Fellows and committed to providing unwavering support for them throughout their careers.”

Over the foundation’s 62-year history of awarding fellowships, more than 1,300 Hertz Fellows have established a remarkable track record of accomplishments. Hertz Fellows hold over 3,000 patents, have founded more than 375 companies, and have created hundreds of thousands of science and technology jobs.